Bread Boxes (meta)

Very nice puzzle, challenging but I just had to slowly and patiently follow your trail of bread... oh, I see what you did there

Fun puzzle! I've been in a meta slump lately, so this was a nice start to the week.

Fun puzzle! Now I have a sudden urge to go reread 23D.

Nice!

Nice one! Loved it. Thanks.

Sort of the "follow your nose" strategy of solving a meta. So, very satisfying. Thanks, Emma.

Tricky and fun. Thanks.

Fun!

Very fun stuff, thanks! Brainstorming lead-ins eventually surfaced PICNIC BASKET, which rang a bell. Confess to being a little wobbly on the MOLD one, but figured it was an S.

Excellent! Love 23D (and the whole series).

Fun challenge. Very smooth, though I had to back solve for the S. Hope to see more like this.

Fun! Maybe week 2.5 though?

Well that went well. You scared me with the Level 4 announcement since we have had a few toughies lately, but this is getting to be a common mechanism (though your was superbly instituted). I did get down a deep hole with the Airport abbr. clues. They stuck out because there were two and Airport LINE abbr. - since I have yet to go to the airport and not have a TSA line - and Airport BOARD abbr. - since I have sat and watched the board for the ARR and DEP planes - gave me fits. I caved and asked for a course correction and my corrector told me "Well two are wrong" which really could only have been those. Anyway, I got there in the end, nice tie in with the Title and answer.

One question, MOJO...how does that anagram to Jim Morrison?

Fun. My printer cut off the bottom of the pdf. I solved using the across clues. BUT, that meant I could not see Picnic location for clue 32A. I ended up back solving for MEADOW which reminded me that I was missing the three bottom clues.

Grid was challenging because of some "cultural reference disparity." :-) And meta was a challenge too, but I got there... after thinking there was going to be some sort of round robin thing going on --- FRUIT BASKET, FRUIT MOLD, WINNER BOARD. It may have been that considering BOARD LINE prepped my head for BORDERLINE, which was the one I saw first.

A delight to follow the trail! Thanks, Emma!

Whoa. Easy concept but subtle execution. Nice job.

Fun! I got Forbidden first, and then Slime, because they are one-word clues. None of the other one-word clues worked, so I had to go searching for the others.

Fun puzzle. Had to cut the bread a few different ways until the crumbs fell!

Well that was a challenge. Took me quite a while (and encouragement from a friendly Muggle) to keep looking for words. "Picnic" finally showed me that they didn't have to be one-word clues. Thanks for the puzzle!

I thought we could count on DrTom for some rye humor here. Oh well. I’ll just challah out congratulations to Dame Fox on a fine puzzle. Also to Pita Abide (I nearly focaccia, but then I remembered ya) for recruiting her to the MMM team. Makes me reluctant to construct another since she’s such a hardtack to follow.

Took me a bit. But, I got it!
Thanks, Emma!

Nicely done.

Finally! Not sure why I found that so hard. I kept abandoning this method because there seemed to be so many alternate possibilities for some: END(line) from 33D, SHORT(line) from 29A and 38A, SOUP(line) from 68A. For a good while I actually had all the correct letters (once I saw that the right words were all first words of clues) but I had the letters in the themer order, so I didn’t see a word. (BURMSC??).
Alternate method I was hoping for at the beginning was to find an 8-letter synonym for each entry: e.g. maybe PROVIDER for BREADWINNER… and maybe those would be in box shapes around the grid, with a solution letter in the center. (Yes you can steal that great idea!

Nicely done!

Thanks for the hints. I can't believe I didn't see it on my own. Very nice!

I had started down the right track after completing the grid and staring awhile yesterday, with paired words for WINNER and BASKET, but wasn’t feeling confident. Peeked at the hints today, so got the confidence to finish it off! Very nice! Thanks for the puzzle!

Nudged out of the bag. Very nice!! Funny - I had one rabbit hole that was SO CLOSE. I saw s-LIME for fruit and c-HOPPER for basket in the clues, but abandoned that when I couldn't find any more.

Thanks!

Finally got it with the second hint - thanks for the puzzle, Emma

Fun puzzle, thanks! I solved thanks to a group effort on the Tuesday Zoom call.

Nice! I made it more difficult than it needed to be, as per usual. The first 2 I saw were "forbidden" and "slime" so I tried to constrain myself to only one-word clues.